Club team-mates, a married couple . . . and now coach and player — meet the Winfield-Hills
When England cricketer Lauren Winfield married Leeds Rhinos’ captain Courtney Hill on Australia’s Sunshine Coast in March, little did they know what awaited in their first six months of marriage.
The Winfield-Hills, two former team-mates at the Big Bash League’s Brisbane Heat, had carefully arranged the wedding to fall between their respective sporting commitments. The plan was simple: wedding, honeymoon, a quick look-in at the Hill family farm in Queensland and then back to England. Lauren Winfield-Hill had a new cricket season to prepare for, while her wife, having swapped rugby league for cricket, was returning for a second season to skipper the Rhinos, where she had won the Telegraph Woman of Steel award last year.
"It was an absolute shambles," laughs Lauren, looking back. "We flew to Hamilton Island for the honeymoon, woke up the next morning and the entire island had gone into lockdown. So we literally just stared at each other on the balcony for six days."
Eventually, the couple made it back to the Hill farm. But as it quickly became clear that neither the cricket nor rugby season would be starting anytime soon, decided to stay put.
"It was really stressful at the start," explains the England opener. "One day we would be thinking that England was going to shut down its borders, and the next it was like we should just stay out here until it passes. In fact I could do more [training in Queensland] than any of the girls in England, as we had a lot more freedom."
So far, so good. But their extended rural existence could only last so long; sport, and their livelihoods, would resume soon. Or so they thought. When the ECB announced its training squads in June, Lauren needed to return. Rugby league, however, remained in limbo.
"That’s when it got stressful again," says Lauren. "Because Courtney’s a self-employed cricket coach [alongside playing rugby]. There was a time when I said to her, look, if you've got nothing to come back [to England] to, if you want to stay out with your family, and be able to do some work, you should do that. And the same thought went through her mind. But then, it seemed ridiculous, we’d just got married, we didn’t want to go home separately."
They came back and set their minds to their respective training regimes, spurring each other on, setting goals for each other, supporting one another. Fixtures for neither of their sports had been announced but as the men’s leagues returned to action, they reassured each other that something would happen soon. It had to.
"It became most difficult when I returned [to England training] and had a bit of a goal, but Courtney didn’t," continues Lauren. "When a goal gets shifted, you’re like, okay, well, let’s work to that. And then when it gets shifted again, it takes a bit of air out of your tyres each time."
England’s rugby league season starts in April, and it wasn’t until August that it was announced that this year’s competitions would all be cancelled.
"So she really struggled," says Lauren. However, just as things looked at their worst, salvation came. Not in rugby, but with Courtney’s coaching hat on. "She’s picked up a coaching role with the Northern Diamonds," beams Lauren.
The Rachael Heyhoe Flint Trophy, the first fully paid domestic 50-over women’s competition in England, was announced in August to fill the uncertainty in the women’s cricket calendar. Lauren played for the Northern Diamonds, the Headingley-based franchise, in the first two matches, scoring 72 in her opening bout before the England players left to prepare for the current West Indies series.
This Sunday the Diamonds play the Southern Vipers in the Trophy Final at Edgbaston. Courtney, who had previously coached a number of Yorkshire age-group teams before successfully applying for the role at the Diamonds, will be there. Owing to Covid-19 restrictions, Lauren won’t.
"It’s taken a little bit of time to get used to," laughs Lauren, on being coached by her new wife. "When we played together, she always used to chirp and chat at me the whole time, and really have to compete at everything."
"And she was initially like that, in coaching. And I was like, Courtney, you’ve got to wear a different mask, this is a different kind of relationship! It’s taken a bit of time to get to that level of understanding, and to ultimately working together. It was quite funny at the beginning, because it really felt like it was the first day at school with a new teacher. And it took time for me too, to understand that she’s giving me feedback as a coach and not my wife!"
"Not divorced, well done us," quipped Lauren on social media, to celebrate six months of marriage. Not only not divorced, but with Lauren part of the England team seeking to seal a series win against the West Indies on Saturday and Courtney looking for her first professional trophy as a coach on Sunday, this is a partnership which appears forged in steel.
